New watercooling loop.
I decided to watercool my third quad core crunching system because of how hard it is to keep those monsters cooled down reliably while crunching DC projects, plus I wanted to try out a 12v pump too. I was going to try to reuse an older cpu block for the loop to save some money which didn't work out in the end (the old RBX block was too long to fit on the mobo without interference). For components I went with the following:
The system that this is going in is as follows:
I wanted to mount the radiator externally and Swiftech had come out with this Radbox, which basically adapts to any fan hole on the back side of your case from 80 mm-120 mm and lets you mount the radiator and fans there. This much simplifies building yourself a watercooled computer since you don't have to figure out how you will mount the radiator internally and is adaptable to either a standard case layout or an inverted board layout like the TJ06 has. I decided to use the MCP355 pump instead of the Swiftech MCP655 adjustable because it is quite a bit smaller physically but with the XSPC top it is easily as powerful (actually more powerful) as the 655. The Swiftech radiator was chosen for a few reasons. It's relatively inexpensive (less than $55) and it has something no other radiator on the market has; a built-in reservoir so you don't have to worry about adding a T-line or reservior to the loop for filling and bleeding. They mounted a top tank on the radiator that has a large screw type filler cap and is tailor made for an external radiator setup like this. I went with the silver Tygon tubing because of silver's antimicrobial qualities. From what I've read, it effectively inhibits microbial growth in the loop and eliminates the need for additives such as antifreeze. With 4 cats in the house, I want to minimize the chance of them getting poisoned accidentally in case of a leak or spill. The tubing isn't cheap at $3.45/foot, but I only needed 6 feet of tubing for this loop anyways so it wasn't a giant added expense over regular Tygon.
As I said earlier, I was going to reuse an old DD RBX waterblock and ordered a conversion top for it. But it ended up being about 1/4 inch too long to fit on the board because of interference with the caps around the socket. So I went ahead and installed a Swiftech Storm block I have here just to get the loop in operation. The Storm was a great block for small core/single core processors but isn't the most efficient for the big dual die Intel quad processors. But, I had a chance to get a hell of a big discount on a Danger Den MC-TDX waterblock, which should be coming in some time this week to replace the Storm. (Thanks Jeremy @ DangerDen
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Fitting everything up went pretty straight forward and it was dead easy to install the XSPC top on the MCP355. After getting everything mounted and plumbed in, it was time to bleed the air out of the loop. I have an old AT psu that I use for testing fans and such and I simply hooked that up to the pump so I could bleed everything down. After priming the pump the loop was very easy to bleed and fill due to the design of the radiator and it only took around 20 minutes to bet all the air bled out of the loop. It was then time to fire the system up and no problems were encountered while doing that. I then started pushing that Q6600 higher than I every ran it before while on air. I presently have it running at 3.6 and temps while running Seti are around 55 C on 2 cores and the other 2 cores about 3-5 C cooler. Once I get the new waterblock installed I expect the temps to drop a bit more, since the MC-TDX is designed for quads with a large area under the inlet having pin fins.
I will post some pics of everything when I get the new waterblock in and go to install it. Over all, I am very impressed with the Swiftech components I bought for this loop. The pump and radiator are first class and the Radbox is pretty nice too, but I wish it would have been made in metal instead of plastic. It doesn't feel that flimsy or anything, but I would feel better if it had been made out of something less likely to break. But it gets the job done just fine and I would think it could even hold a triple fan radiator without problem.
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Pump - Swiftech MCP355 (rebadged DDC3.2) with an XSPC top, 1/2" DD Fatboy barbs
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Radiator - Swiftech MCR220-QP Res radiator with Swiftech 1/2 inch high flow metal barbs (dual 120 mm fan radiator with built-in reservoir)
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Fans - 1 Panaflo L1BX and 1 Delta EFB1212LE 3 blade low speed - I already owned these fans and they weren't in use, so I gave them a job. Plus, I wanted to use 38 mm thick fans to give a little extra room behind the computer between the back of the case and the radiator
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Tubing - 1/2" ID Tygon Silver Antimicrobial Tubing
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External rad mount - Swiftech RadBox MCB-120 Revision 2
The system that this is going in is as follows:
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Case - Silverstone TJ06B
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Mobo - Asus P5Q Pro
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Processor - Q6600 G0 stepping, 1.25v VID
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vid card - a cheap one because this is a crunching rig, not a gaming rig
I wanted to mount the radiator externally and Swiftech had come out with this Radbox, which basically adapts to any fan hole on the back side of your case from 80 mm-120 mm and lets you mount the radiator and fans there. This much simplifies building yourself a watercooled computer since you don't have to figure out how you will mount the radiator internally and is adaptable to either a standard case layout or an inverted board layout like the TJ06 has. I decided to use the MCP355 pump instead of the Swiftech MCP655 adjustable because it is quite a bit smaller physically but with the XSPC top it is easily as powerful (actually more powerful) as the 655. The Swiftech radiator was chosen for a few reasons. It's relatively inexpensive (less than $55) and it has something no other radiator on the market has; a built-in reservoir so you don't have to worry about adding a T-line or reservior to the loop for filling and bleeding. They mounted a top tank on the radiator that has a large screw type filler cap and is tailor made for an external radiator setup like this. I went with the silver Tygon tubing because of silver's antimicrobial qualities. From what I've read, it effectively inhibits microbial growth in the loop and eliminates the need for additives such as antifreeze. With 4 cats in the house, I want to minimize the chance of them getting poisoned accidentally in case of a leak or spill. The tubing isn't cheap at $3.45/foot, but I only needed 6 feet of tubing for this loop anyways so it wasn't a giant added expense over regular Tygon.
As I said earlier, I was going to reuse an old DD RBX waterblock and ordered a conversion top for it. But it ended up being about 1/4 inch too long to fit on the board because of interference with the caps around the socket. So I went ahead and installed a Swiftech Storm block I have here just to get the loop in operation. The Storm was a great block for small core/single core processors but isn't the most efficient for the big dual die Intel quad processors. But, I had a chance to get a hell of a big discount on a Danger Den MC-TDX waterblock, which should be coming in some time this week to replace the Storm. (Thanks Jeremy @ DangerDen
)Fitting everything up went pretty straight forward and it was dead easy to install the XSPC top on the MCP355. After getting everything mounted and plumbed in, it was time to bleed the air out of the loop. I have an old AT psu that I use for testing fans and such and I simply hooked that up to the pump so I could bleed everything down. After priming the pump the loop was very easy to bleed and fill due to the design of the radiator and it only took around 20 minutes to bet all the air bled out of the loop. It was then time to fire the system up and no problems were encountered while doing that. I then started pushing that Q6600 higher than I every ran it before while on air.
I presently have it running at 3.6 and temps while running Seti are around 55 C on 2 cores and the other 2 cores about 3-5 C cooler. Once I get the new waterblock installed I expect the temps to drop a bit more, since the MC-TDX is designed for quads with a large area under the inlet having pin fins.I will post some pics of everything when I get the new waterblock in and go to install it. Over all, I am very impressed with the Swiftech components I bought for this loop. The pump and radiator are first class and the Radbox is pretty nice too, but I wish it would have been made in metal instead of plastic. It doesn't feel that flimsy or anything, but I would feel better if it had been made out of something less likely to break. But it gets the job done just fine and I would think it could even hold a triple fan radiator without problem.
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Comments
Idle thought: does watercooling the rig help the ambient temperature in the room if you have multiple rigs folding?
With the XSPC top, what's your pump's flow numbers look like?
I don't know exactly because the tank top is built much like a car radiator, with the top being the reservoir. You will see what I mean when I take the system down to install the MC-TDX. I will take pics of it when the water's drained and the cap removed. I would imagine it to be at least 2-4 ounces though. Plenty enough to bleed the loop down. When I refill the loop I will see if I can get an estimate on how much water the tank holds once the water level gets above the tube level.
No, you still have the same amount of heat dump into the room. But if you could rig up some kind of exhaust from the radiator back to the outside or the attic you would be able to keep a lot of the heat from the room and it would be easier to do this on an external radiator than either an internal rad or regular air cooled hsf.
Using Martin's Flow Rate Estimator spreadsheet to figure flow rates for this setup, the MCP355 with the XSPC top will flow 1.86 gpm with the Storm in the loop. If you substitute the MCP655 in the loop in place of my pump, it gives a flow rate estimation of 1.55 gpm. Still good numbers for the MCP655 but not in the same league as my pump. If you substitute the MC-TDX block in place of the Storm, the flow rates show 2.93 gpm for the MCP355/SXPC pump and 2.53 gpm for the MCP655. So in both a low restriction loop and a moderately high restriction loop the MCP355/XSPC combo does better than the MCP655 and the pump is more compact to boot.
BTW, that flowrate estimator spreadsheet is real handy for helping you plan a loop out, if you didn't already know about it.:) This guy Martin seems to have his stuff together on watercooling and has invested quite a bit of money in testing equipment for testing radiators, waterblocks and pumps.